The most recent Beckett Vintage Collector arrived in my mailbox Monday and with it my latest article for the magazine.
It's the 20th article I've written for the magazine as I'm coming up on six years since first joining the writing roster there. But it's also been a year since I've had a story published, mostly due to 1) Far less time to devote to magazine writing, thanks to my "real job" and 2) Plain running low on ideas.
But I'm glad I had enough to get me to 20. I'm fairly happy with the subject of this article. It's certainly something I can relate to considering my profession. It's about the many examples of name errors on sports cards.
I know the struggle well -- we publish sports names almost every day at my job. But it still was surprising how many name errors I came across while researching for this story (and how many more emerged once I announced my story had published).
I quickly realized I would not be able to include them all, so I focused on specific examples, many of them well-known. And Topps' recent botching of the name "Yastrzemski" was the inspiration and the lead-in for this article.
I probably worked as hard on this as I have on any other magazine article, digging up instances and quotes where I could. Researching on the internet is not as smooth since Google submitted to the ways of AI. Most search requests turn up junk and you have to take about 10 more steps every time to find what you're looking for, if you find it at all.
So I'm proud of what I uncovered and I'm also happy I used tools such as my newspaper's library and my old collection of Baseball Card Magazines from the 1980s to enhance this article. Not every bit of information came off the internet.
The magazine issue (the one with Shoeless Joe on the cover) will probably be available on newsstands in the next couple of weeks or if you have a subscription, you may have it already. And, yes, I realize magazine issues cost more than you think they should. If more people read magazines, that would not be the case. Also, see: newspapers.
When I have a magazine article come out, I like to find some sort of spin-off on the article for the blog. Kind of a treat for my readers. Call it an exclusive, although you aren't subscribing to this thing.
This time, I wanted to take a small part of my a story to write about because I'm puzzled over it. It involves the Lew/Lou Burdette error(s), if they are errors.
This card is considered an uncorrected error because it spells Burdette's first name as "Lou".
All of these are considered uncorrected errors, too, because his name is listed as "Lou" and not "Lew" (But, you're saying, he signed his name "Lou" on the 1967 card -- more on that in a minute).
Meanwhile these two cards, in which Burdette's name is spelled "Lew," are considered correct.
All of this is according to Trading Card Database, but also Beckett's price guides going back years and years.
And it's true that Burdette's full name is Selva Lewis Burdette. He went by his middle name (Burdette died in 2007). I also found a TV report that relayed an interview with Burdette's daughter. She said that when Topps spelled his name "Lou" on the 1958 Topps card, the pitcher didn't correct Topps and shrugged it off saying, "as long as they pronounce it right." I included that in the magazine article.
So this obviously means his family knew his name as "Lew". However ... his SABR biography said that Burdette spelled his name "Lou" throughout his life! That explains the signature on the 1967 Topps card. And try to find an autographed card of Burdette spelled "Lew". All of them that I saw are signed "Lou".
Later, when Burdette was a coach, Topps went back to spelling his name as "Lew". And most of the retro cards issued long after his career ended are spelled "Lew". But it's clear that Burdette himself either preferred "Lou" or just didn't distinguish between the two different spellings.
It's probably why Topps switched to "Lou". It may have noticed his signature spelled "Lou" and went with it. Bowman, by the way, was spelling -- I guess "misspelling" -- his name as "Lou" through much of the '50s.
It's interesting that while technically his name is "Lewis," somebody somewhere decided to go against how Burdette repeatedly spelled his name and label it an error. They're kind of saying Burdette didn't know how to spell his name. (Burdette was known for his good humor, so maybe he was just having fun with everyone when signing his name).
Other price guides and sites like COMC don't attach error listings to Burdette's cards, they simply list them as "Lew" or "Lou" according to the card. That's probably the better way. It's just that I've heard about the Burdette spelling error for decades and thought it interesting that it isn't as clear-cut as your typical card error.
Anyway, it's still cool that I'm still writing magazine articles. Who knows for how long but I'll try to keep it going.
Comments